What is the brain for Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman?, from Selected American Authors: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Ed Folson, University of Iowa
"On Thursday, we will talk about how Dickinson and Whitman imagine the brain, the inside of the skull. Both of them offer tours of the brain. Read Whitman's very early poem called "Pictures" (handout), where he takes you on a tour of the inside of the skull. Then read the following Dickinson poems aboutthe brain: 280, 315, 410, 419, 556, 613, 632, 634, 670, 937, 945, 967, 1046, 1727." ... http://twist.lib.uiowa.edu/ww-ed/syllabus.html
Anne shows:
126. The brain is wider than the sky. >#26. The brain within its groove. >#112. I felt a funeral in my brain. >#106. I felt a cleavage in my mind. >#69. One need not be a chamber to be haunted. >#46. He fumbles at your spirit. >#33. When I was small, a woman died. >
The Classroom Electric: Dickinson, Whitman, and American Culture
Poems by Emily Dickinson, from Bipolar Brain
Dashing Genius: Emily Dickinson and the Punctuation of Cognition
Bob Dylan and Emily Dickinson: Typological Poets of the Broken Heart
Emily Dickinson's Mystic Poetry, "transformation and self-realization"
410
The first Day's Night had come --
And grateful that a thing
So terrible -- had been endured --
I told my Soul to sing --
She said her Strings were snapt --
Her Bow -- to Atoms blown --
And so to mend her -- gave me work
Until another Morn --
And then -- a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face --
Until it blocked my eyes --
My Brain -- begun to laugh --
I mumbled -- like a fool --
And tho' 'tis Years ago -- that Day --
My Brain keeps giggling -- still.
And Something's odd -- within --
That person that I was --
And this One -- do not feel the same --
Could it be Madness -- this?
419
We grow accustomed to the Dark --
When light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye --
A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night --
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --
And meet the Road -- erect --
And so of larger -- Darkness --
Those Evenings of the Brain --
When not a Moon disclose a sign --
Or Star -- come out -- within --
The Bravest -- grope a little --
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead --
But as they learn to see --
Either the Darkness alters --
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight --
And Life steps almost straight.
426
It don't sound so terrible -- quite -- as it did --
I run it over -- "Dead", Brain, "Dead."
Put it in Latin -- left of my school --
Seems it don't shriek so -- under rule.
Turn it, a little -- full in the face
A Trouble looks bitterest --
Shift it -- just --
Say "When Tomorrow comes this way --
I shall have waded down one Day."
I suppose it will interrupt me some
Till I get accustomed -- but then the Tomb
Like other new Things -- shows largest -- then --
And smaller, by Habit --
It's shrewder then
Put the Thought in advance -- a Year --
How like "a fit" -- then --
Murder -- wear!
from http://members.aol.com/GivenRandy/r_emily4.htm from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Paradise Fictitious - Dickinson's Milton "When Dickinson writes "Forever at His side to walk - /. . . Brain of His Brain - / Blood of His Blood -" (P246), she becomes Eve remembering Adam's first words to her: "Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh, my self / Before me" (8:495-496)
He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, --
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.
from http://shoga.wwa.com/~rgs/xdickin.htm, has also frog ... I'm nobody, who are you?
Obituary, from Springfield Republican, by Susan Dickinson
Emily Dickinson's Letters, Atlantic, 1891, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
944. I learned - at least - what home could be/.../Your problem of the brain
945. This is a Blossom of the Brain/
967. Pain - expands the time - /.../Of a single Brain
from http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/dickinson_901-1000.html